At the meeting here tonight,Members had an awful fright!Someone was attempting to destroy us all!Sweetheart now is asking meAnd Niue, too, if we,If we noticed anything un-us-u-al?Was anything ...

CHORUS: Was anything odd? Was anything strange? Was anything stranger? Was anything off? Was anything weird? Was anything weirder? Was anything rare? Was anything queer? Was anything peculiar? Did you see, did you see anything at all?

We do not appreciateFolks who joke about our state!Ev'ryone's unusual in their own way!She talked to this one door-knob,Quite stand-offish, what a snob!Would ... not ... play, no wa-ay! (repeat CHORUS)

When we met in Cleveland town, someone tried to burn us down!And we started to choke ... when the room filled with smoke!Nylon and acetone! Did the bomber act alone?And we didn't see ... gerbil was an absentee!

Now Artie, sir ... we're all wondering just where you were!The girl with fur ... is not the finest judge of character!

For that ...Hot gerbil! Muscular guy!The other chimerae, they all nearly die!You'd better have an airtight alibi,You hot gerbil, hot gerbil!

Okay, I'll throw my own ideas into the mix. It WASN'T Artie; however, he discovered their plot and changed the venue to keep his fellow transgenics safe. He then either went after the bad guys in the original location (possible but not likely, unless he was planning on trying to appeal to their sense of reason, which IS possible) or was nabbed directly after changing the venue (much more likely) and is currently in their clutches. Bet he hiccups, escapes and shows up in his gerbil form to confront Tip and Sweetheart.

Gee, and I was under the impression Sweetheart was only into hot Goblin on Goblin action... Now it turns out she's into classic slash-fic? What's next? Getting her kicks being walked on a leash & spiked collar?

How the heck does Sweetheart put on a headset? I've never noticed her shoulders having the articulation for such, and I can't imagine Tip having enough free time if he has to change clothes and get ready for a date.

@Ed: That's a classic! Actually, I suspect that Sweetheart's jealous. If Tip can be into a transgenic gerbil, why wasn't he into her when he was a husky, hot dog? (All puns intended.) @everyone: I love the song that William Tracy posted yesterday for Sweetheart, by the British duo Spray. If you go to their website, you'll find that one of them, Ricardo Autobahn, has an album called Interrobang. Clearly, these people have been channeling Shaenon and Jeff for a while now.

@Glenn: Hasn't UNITY always had that tendency? Right in the middle of rambling on about pickaxes, she'll bust out with a gem that perfectly sums up the current situation, and--squirrel! Sometimes I wonder if her mind was stitched together the same way her body was. I'm sure at least one genius was among the brains Dr. Lee picked for the project.

Of course, given the recent events detailed in Nick's livejournal, we can probably expect more of this.

@Grant and Eddddd: If Sweetheart and Artie are both colorblind, that would make her a good person to consult wouldn't it?

Most dogs aren't colorblind. (Nor are most Canadian dogs colourblind.) They just have (compared to humans) fairly weak color sense. (More rods; fewer cones.) Ie; they see the world in pastels. I don't know about gerbils, though. (I'd assume that Artie had color vision when in human form.)

Dogs aren't colourblind, they have dichromatic vision, ie for them light has two primary colours, neither of which is the same as any of our three. So end result: they don't see colour as well as we do, and what they do see is totally different from what we see.

(Fun consequence, colour TV doesn't work well for dogs, or cats for that matter, cats are trichromates like us, but the primaries are different so although they might have a similer ability to diferentiat the colours they see will be entirely different from what we see and colour tv would look really messed up for them)

Don't think I'm a hypocrite 'Cause you don't know the half of it And if you were in Cleveland with me You would see

Artie, who made Tip go gay: Subfamily Gerbillinae So you see that it's most improper A guy with fur! Don't be obtuse If Tip should seduce My pot-smoking friend . . . Well . . . heaven forfend! With H.T.—you just watch— There'll be no sniffing crotch For me

Why is my transgenic date okay? It's complicated I know it looks to you like Tip and I are the same We're twitterpated But my tiger is A quadriped all of the time And a male, so, you see, it is clearly different Unity, please side with me It's really awfully complicated Yeah, yeah, yeah

Well, I ... met this cat in a bar this afternoon,Well, we ... had a chat, and he said, "I'll see you soon!"Then Tip said "Hi" to a transgenic guy, and somehowWe made a double date, and it's ... complicated now!

Not the same! Unity, not the same! Comparison's lame! With H.T., it just ain't the same!

Wherever we go, someone tries blowing up!H.T. and Leo, they were just showing up!Now don't get rude! Tonight's just food and chat ...What to wear? Stripes make my derriere look fat!

Not the same! How to dress? Not the same! This evening became Such a mess, hope it won't be lame!

Sweetheart strikes me as one of those people who make themselves unhappy.

Adam (10-0-0-1) says:
You know Tip normally looks like a man dressing like a woman but something about the way he is dressed and the angle it is drawn at makes him look like an actual woman. It is kind of unnerving in a way.

Ah, but if Sweetheart says "It's hard to tell when Unity is euphemizing" then the natural thing would be for Tip to give an example when Unity *was* euphemizing. So the question is, when Unity throttled that bishop, what euphemism did she use?

Dave Van Domelen (dvandom) says:
There's an important and horrifying point here: if Sweetheart can't tell when Unity is using a sexual euphemism, that means Unity DOES on occasion use them. And for it to be a euphemism, she has to know what she means.

Working with a dog for a beehive (buzz!)Working for the government (buzz buzz!)Hoping that our friend is still alive,I wonder where she went?She's checking a suspicious bog blaze,Down by New Orleans ...She's got me in a daze, from her turn of phrase,I don't know what it means!

Punchin' an alligator!Hittin' a critter right in the chops!Punchin' an alligator!Right in the kisser until he drops!

But "throttling the bishop" isn't a euphemism at all, but a scholarly reference to George of Cappadocia, heretical (Arian) Archbishop of Alexandria, who was throttled and dismembered -- with his lifeless bodyparts thrown into the sea -- by an angry mob of Pagans and Catholics acting in concert, although he was later resurrected (alas, not literally) as St. George the Dragon-slayer. This is an obvious metaphor for Untity herself, so self-referential.